06 December 2007

Professor Meirion Francis Lewis gave evidence at my trial about Exhibit pages 51-59, a restricted document dated January 1982, with the identification number 79481/PBH/BB/SO8. Professor Lewis told the Court that this restricted document was used on ALARM missiles in service during the 1991 Gulf War.

I now know that Professor Lewis’s evidence was incorrect, because the restricted document became obsolete on 27 March 1984, long before the Gulf War. The document used on ALARM was an unclassified MSDS specification with the reference 1011-00435. This information was not put before my jury, and it would certainly have had a profound effect if my jury had heard that the document used on ALARM was unclassified, and therefore officially judged to be not sensitive.

The Police never interviewed any of the 16 people on the circulation list of the restricted document. The only conclusion that can be drawn from such unbelievable “incompetence” is that the Police were deliberately avoiding the possibility that those potential witnesses might give testimony damaging to the Prosecution case: that the restricted document was obsolete, and that the actual document used on the ALARM project was unclassified. This Police ploy ensured that it was impossible for me to obtain a fair trial, due to that missing evidence.

Until Professor Lewis appeared in the witness box, the Defence was given no warning that the restricted document might be related to ALARM, or that this document would take on a heightened significance at trial as being the only Official Secrets Act document found in my possession. As a result the Defence legal team did not seek an expert able to testify about ALARM, and I was denied the opportunity to prepare a proper defence against Professor Lewis’s surprise undisclosed evidence.

It now appears doubtful whether any of Professor Lewis’s “expert” opinions were correct about the restricted document, because he presented it as a document still in use in the 1990s, when it was in fact made obsolete in 1984.

The new evidence demonstrates that Dr Meirion Francis Lewis - as he then was - could not have been a credible expert witness, because he gave false and totally misleading evidence to the Court. Following on from my trial I note that Dr. Lewis became a Professor and was also awarded the CBE. One can only hope that these were not his rewards for giving perjured evidence at my trial.